Elephants understand humans in a way most other animals dont, according to the latest research from the University of St Andrews. The new study, published October 10, 2013 by Current Biology, found that elephants are the only wild animals to understand human pointing without any training to do so.

The researchers, Anna Smet and Professor Richard Byrne from the Universitys School of Psychology and Neuroscience, set out to test whether African elephants could learn to follow pointing  and were surprised to find them responding successfully from the first trial.

They said, In our study we found that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so. This has shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates.

Elephants are part of an ancient African radiation of animals, including the hyrax, golden mole, aardvark and manatee. Elephants share with humans an elaborate and complex living network in which support, empathy and help for others are critical for survival. The researchers say that it may be only in such a society that the ability to follow pointing has adaptive value.

Professor Byrne explained, When people want to direct the attention of others, they will naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Pointing is the most immediate and direct way that humans have for controlling others attention.

Most other animals do not point, nor do they understand pointing when others do it. Even our closest relatives, the great apes, typically fail to understand pointing when its done for them by human carers; in contrast, the domestic dog, adapted to working with humans over many thousands of years and sometimes selectively bred to follow pointing, is able to follow human pointing  a skill the dogs probably learn from repeated, one-to-one interactions with their owners.

The St Andrews researchers worked with a group of elephants who give rides to tourists in Zimbabwe. The animals were trained to follow certain vocal commands, but they werent accustomed to pointing.

But what really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything. Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment.

The researchers say that it is possible that elephants may do something akin to pointing as a means of communicating with each other, using their long trunk.

Anna continued, Elephants do regularly make prominent trunk gestures, for instance when one individual detects the scent of a dangerous predator, but it remains to be seen whether those motions act in elephant society as points.

The findings help explain how humans have been able to rely on wild-caught elephants as work animals, for logging, transport, or war, for thousands of years.

Professor Byrne explained, It has long been a puzzle that one animal, the elephant, doesnt seem to need domestication in order to learn to work effectively with humans. They have a natural capacity to interact with humans even though  unlike horses, dogs and camels  they have never been bred or domesticated for that role. Our findings suggest that elephants seem to understand us humans in a way most other animals dont.

Professor Byrne explained, It has long been a puzzle that one animal, the elephant, doesnt seem to need domestication in order to learn to work effectively with humans. They have a natural capacity to interact with humans even though  unlike horses, dogs and camels  they have never been bred or domesticated for that role.

Never Professor? Never?

I'll buy not since the last Ice Age, but not never.

We and they could well have had quite the relationship during and prior to then.

Not much evidence of a civilization left after everything got scraped flat and covered by a 300 ft sea level rise, but perhaps traces linger in our genes...

Not much evidence of a civilization left after everything got scraped flat and covered by a 300 ft sea level rise, but perhaps traces linger in our genes...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of the slightest evidence of any technological civilization prior to the most recent glacial period which lasted from roughly 110,000 to 10,000 years ago.

4
posted on 10/14/2013 8:44:06 AM PDT
by Kip Russell
(Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)

Sometimes I wonder how these characters got PhDs in elephontology (and $ 150K/yr. tenured positions) and then come up with the most inane findings. You could have saved the country millions by the above remark. Bet you didn't get a grant, either.

Nor am I. At least beyond tales of Atlantis and Mu. I’m not willing to totally rule out the possibility, though.

And I’m also assuming that the pyramids really are only 4500 years old.

Still, how much recognizable evidence would there be of a society that was so advanced that everything they built and used was biodegradable and recyclable, after an intervening ice age and major sea level fluctuations?

Keep in mind that so 80% of the world’s population lives within 200 ft of sea level and that sea level rose 300 feet after the last ice age...

10
posted on 10/14/2013 8:53:14 AM PDT
by null and void
(I'm betting on an Obama Trifecta: A Nobel Peace Prize, an Impeachment, AND a War Crimes Trial...)

There is some compelling evidence that the Spinx in Egypt is 12,000+ years old.

It is my understanding that civilization requires agriculture, and agriculture started (in the west) about 7,000 B.C. so if the Spinx really was built 10,000 B.C. who built it? And then there are the Great Pyramids, again there are good arguments that those could not have been built by a (mostly) stone age people, re the 2500 BC Egyptians.

12
posted on 10/14/2013 8:55:06 AM PDT
by jpsb
(Believe nothing until it has been officially denied)

And what do you do with elephants when they are overpopulated and eating everything in sight? Regulating hunting of wild elephants provides meat for the locals, an infusions of cash from the trophy hunters, and maintains a healthy and stable population.

18
posted on 10/14/2013 9:03:16 AM PDT
by kickstart
("A gun is a tool. It is only as good or as bad as the man who uses it" . Alan Ladd in 'Shane')

Still, how much recognizable evidence would there be of a society that was so advanced that everything they built and used was biodegradable and recyclable, after an intervening ice age and major sea level fluctuations?

The evidence would be enormous.

Such a civilization wouldn't just spring up out of nowhere, going instantly from the Stone Age to 21st Century (at least) technology. It would take thousands of years and a population base of at least hundreds of millions of people. Such a civilization would leave worldwide evidence.

A trivial example: glass bottles, when buried, can last essentially unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years.

Another example: the amount of metal used in a modern city would leave traces in the soil and rock that could still be detected millions of years later. Even if your hypothetical city recycled to an extent that would make environmental activists giddy with joy, they still would have had cities in their past that didn't have the technology to do so.

If there had been a highly technological civilization prior to 10,000 years ago, we would have found traces (and more) of it by now.

22
posted on 10/14/2013 9:10:40 AM PDT
by Kip Russell
(Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)

Hes talking about the last great flood. We all live in the regeneration of the last great catastrophe. This is the only answer to the question that science will not adress and has no way to explain.
Question....How did the oldest civilization on the planet (Sumer according to scientists) have all the arts, science, math, writing, medicine, agriculture, world maps, sea navigation, astronomy, pictures of the solar system, etc ?
Answer....they got it from the previous civilization.

One usually doesn't see "Great Flood" and "legitmate archaeology" in the same conversation...

Question....How did the oldest civilization on the planet (Sumer according to scientists) have all the arts, science, math, writing, medicine, agriculture, world maps, sea navigation, astronomy, pictures of the solar system, etc ? Answer....they got it from the previous civilization.

I have to call shenanigans on this one; are you seriously asserting that ancient Sumer had "pictures of the solar system" and world maps? As for some of the rest (arts, math, etc.) it doesn't require an antediluvian civilization. People (such as the Sumerians) were perfectly capable of inventing such things as writing on their own.

35
posted on 10/14/2013 9:49:36 AM PDT
by Kip Russell
(Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)

Opposite, really. In Nightfall the church tried to provide continuity.

Not so. In the short story, there was a group known as the Cult which used their scriptures to predict the Nightfall itself. While they were in fact correct, they didn't want to preserve civilization...that was the goal of a group of scientists.

40
posted on 10/14/2013 10:01:38 AM PDT
by Kip Russell
(Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)

Maybe, but squirrels do not understand pointing. If I toss a squirrel a peanut, and he doesn’t see where it landed, my pointing at it doesn’t clue him in at all. He’ll still search around randomly trying to sniff out where it went.

One usually doesn't see "Great Flood" and "legitmate archaeology" in the same conversation...

Yep, but even in legitimate archaeology they recognize the Mediterranean filled abruptly when the natural dam at Gibraltar broke, the abrupt flooding of the Black Sea when the natural dam at the Bosphorus broke, the formation of the Scab-lands when the ice dam for lake Missoula broke, and the climate shift when the glaciers retreated enough to drain the Great Lakes region down the St Lawrence rather than the Mississippi.

Not to mention the world wide 300 ft sea level rise at the end of the last Ice Age that flooded places like Sundaland and what is now the English Channel.

43
posted on 10/14/2013 10:13:01 AM PDT
by null and void
(I'm betting on an Obama Trifecta: A Nobel Peace Prize, an Impeachment, AND a War Crimes Trial...)

Yep. I'm open to such evidence being found. Until then, it's just speculative fiction/fantasy.

In Stephen Baxter's fairly recent novel, "Evolution" (highly recommended, BTW), one chapter entitled "The Hunters of Pangaea" posits a stone-age civilization of humanoid dinosaurs, but they don't have enough of an impact on the environment to be noticed by humans, 145 million years later. Quoting from the book:

The whole of the orniths rise and fall was contained in a few thousand years, a thin slice of time compared to the eighty million years the dinosaur empire would yet persist. They made tools only of perishable materials  wood, vegetable fiber, leather. They never discovered metals, or learned how to shape stone. They didnt even build fires, which might have left hearths. Their stay had been too brief; the thin strata would not preserve their inflated skulls. When they were gone the orniths would leave no trace for human archaeologists to ponder, none but the puzzle of the great sauropods abrupt extinction.

When asked whether some of the strange species he invented for the book actually existed, he answered essentially, "Of course not".

Fun to read about, though!

49
posted on 10/14/2013 10:19:57 AM PDT
by Kip Russell
(Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)

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